Nearly a year ago there was a number of blog posts I wanted to comment on, but this past year has been so hectic that I never got around to it. Until today!
It all started with blog posts about some problems the faculty blogger was having with a student and discussing two students and their ability to be successful in academia. Not long thereafter, another blogger commented, saying that one shouldn't post about people that work for them under the guise of anonymity. Based on some of the comments on that post, a second blog post made the comment that you wouldn't want to be as honest with your trainees in person as you are anonymously on the web (including some comments from a reader who claims that while she enjoys reading these blogs she would not want to work for any of the people writing them because it makes them seem like bad leaders). There are really two big issues here, and I agree with one and disagree with the other.
First, there is an issue of blogging 'anonymously' and discussing real interactions with real people. I agree that this can be a huge issue. If you are giving a lot of details about your work and the people you work with, at some point someone is going to figure out who you are in real life and who everyone in those posts referred to. Basically, it could come back to bite you in the ass one day. This is why I chose to blog openly as myself and link to my blog from my google+ page and even my lab website. It was a conscious decision I made to ensure that I would be careful about what I posted and only say things online that I would be willing to say to someone in person. Fortunately, I am pretty ballsy and willing to say a lot of things to people, so it hasn't really impacted what I blog about too much. But it does mean that I won't ever discuss specifics about my students, because I know how much it would've killed me if my supervisor had done that. However, a lot of the issues that get brought up in those posts about students/employees/other faculty are important to discuss, they just need to be discussed in a way that can't be linked back to the specific person. It's not always an easy thing to do, but since I want to keep my job I'm willing to work at it.
The second issue that stemmed from this is that all the unpleasantness about our jobs needs, to some extent, to be kept from our trainees to maintain our authority as a leader. I do not like this at all. You do not have to be perfect or unemotional to be a good leader that students will respect. There's nothing wrong with being human, and in the same way that you probably cut students some slack when you know they're going through a rough time, I bet students would be a lot less demanding of their supervisors if they really knew how much was on their plates and how stressed out they were about it. Moreover, this form of leadership keeps giving students a highly idealized vision of what being an academic is like, which is doing the student a huge disservice. Students should know what they are getting in to if they choose an academic career, not find out the hard way their first year on the job.
Lastly, the idea was put forth that perhaps academics who blog about their experiences make worse supervisors. I whole-heartedly disagree, but I am admittedly biased because a) I blog and b) I think I'm an awesome mentor. My experience has been that the people who actually spend time thinking about their role as a supervisor and whether or not they are being a good mentor are usually much better mentors - they are self-aware enough to notice when they make mistakes or things are going wrong in their labs and care enough to try to do something about it. I'm sure there are bloggers who are bad mentors, but there are also many non-bloggers who are bad mentors. To me, the fact that someone is taking the time to organize their thoughts about their job is probably a good sign.
Monday, May 20, 2013
Diversifying your research portfolio
Recently, I've had conversations with a number of graduate students who are not particularly enjoying science at the moment, and a lot of this seems to stem from either supervisor-related issues (see my previous posts about this issue here, here, and here) or from the despair that is common when a project that you invested a ton of time in just doesn't work out. This got me thinking about how investing your time and energy in research projects is much like investing your money. I think it's safe to say that no good financial advisor would recommend that you invest five years worth of salary in one risky company. But that's pretty much what you're doing if your dissertation project is the only project you have (particularly if it's a risky project that has a minimal chance of working out).
As with investing money, research investments tend to follow the pattern of high-risk research yielding potentially high rewards (e.g., a paper in Science, lots of citations) but having a large probability of failure. Conversely, low-risk research has a high probability of succeeding and leading to publication, but the payoff is lower (e.g., publishing in a low or mid-tier journal, low or moderate citations). For me, one of the keys to maintaining motivation and productivity has been to have a diverse research portfolio with projects that vary in their riskiness. I have some projects that are lower impact but are almost guaranteed to lead to a publication along with some riskier, more exciting projects that could potentially lead to high-impact papers... but could also totally flop. So, even when one of those risky projects fails I still have papers I can write and projects that are going well, keeping me from falling into a pit of research-induced despair.
My advice, to grad students in particular, is to make sure that you aren't betting everything on one project. If your dissertation project doesn't work out you can usually still get a PhD, but you'll have a hell of a time getting a postdoc or faculty position without any publications. Having some side projects of varying riskiness can help ensure that you end up employable. And, as a bonus, some of those projects that you initially thought were low-impact could turn out to be really interesting and exciting to the field!
As with investing money, research investments tend to follow the pattern of high-risk research yielding potentially high rewards (e.g., a paper in Science, lots of citations) but having a large probability of failure. Conversely, low-risk research has a high probability of succeeding and leading to publication, but the payoff is lower (e.g., publishing in a low or mid-tier journal, low or moderate citations). For me, one of the keys to maintaining motivation and productivity has been to have a diverse research portfolio with projects that vary in their riskiness. I have some projects that are lower impact but are almost guaranteed to lead to a publication along with some riskier, more exciting projects that could potentially lead to high-impact papers... but could also totally flop. So, even when one of those risky projects fails I still have papers I can write and projects that are going well, keeping me from falling into a pit of research-induced despair.
My advice, to grad students in particular, is to make sure that you aren't betting everything on one project. If your dissertation project doesn't work out you can usually still get a PhD, but you'll have a hell of a time getting a postdoc or faculty position without any publications. Having some side projects of varying riskiness can help ensure that you end up employable. And, as a bonus, some of those projects that you initially thought were low-impact could turn out to be really interesting and exciting to the field!
Monday, September 10, 2012
My first month as an assistant professor
If I had to estimate, so far my time each week is partitioned as follows:
Some points of interest include
Let me relate a few of these fuck-ups for entertainment purposes (yours, not mine). For about two weeks I was unable to get into my office because no one had a key to the door. I had a TA waiting for a copy of the course textbook for three weeks, and it turned out it was sitting in the dept. office the whole time. I am still waiting for computers because the purchase orders never got submitted.
The time spent preparing to teach is largely because it's a new prep, so hopefully in the future that will be pared down some. Also, it's because I'm OCD about my lecture slides being beautiful. That I can't blame anyone else for. Except maybe my PhD supervisor, since he is OCD about his lecture slides and he trained me to be just like him. Yes, it is all his fault.
Now, how would I like to be spending my time? Assuming that I can't just lie on a beach all day reading a good book:
.png)
A lot more research, a lot less dealing with other people's fuck-ups. Now that would get me out of bed in the morning.
- an insanely large proportion of time devoted to preparing for lectures, far more than I actually spend giving the lectures
- an abysmally small proportion of time devoted to doing research
- a much larger proportion of time spent dealing with other people's fuck-ups than I would like
Let me relate a few of these fuck-ups for entertainment purposes (yours, not mine). For about two weeks I was unable to get into my office because no one had a key to the door. I had a TA waiting for a copy of the course textbook for three weeks, and it turned out it was sitting in the dept. office the whole time. I am still waiting for computers because the purchase orders never got submitted.
The time spent preparing to teach is largely because it's a new prep, so hopefully in the future that will be pared down some. Also, it's because I'm OCD about my lecture slides being beautiful. That I can't blame anyone else for. Except maybe my PhD supervisor, since he is OCD about his lecture slides and he trained me to be just like him. Yes, it is all his fault.
Now, how would I like to be spending my time? Assuming that I can't just lie on a beach all day reading a good book:
.png)
Sunday, July 22, 2012
Career resources for postdocs and new faculty
Today, in an effort to avoid working on lecture prep, I thought I would share some resources from around the web that I have found useful for my career preparation so far.
Psychology job wiki - This wiki is not only a useful place for perusing available faculty positions, the forums are really interesting. There is a lot of discussion about the job search process as well as issues relating to being a new faculty member. There are similar wiki's for other fields as well, and I imagine they also have useful forum discussions worth perusing.
Duke Postdoc Services YouTube channel - Duke has held a number of panel discussions and workshops for postdocs which they have helpfully recorded and made available via youtube. There are a number of videos on the job search and interview process, discussions about non-academic careers, lab management, funding... lots of good stuff.
Making the Right Moves: A Practical Guide to Scientific Management for Postdocs and New Faculty - this is the lab management guide I have just started going through. It is based on a course in scientific management offered at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and contains a ton of information on things like the job search process, staffing a lab, getting funding, effective teaching, and time management.
Other blogs that write about academic stuff and often provide some good food for thought:
Academic Jungle
The Professor is In
Female Science Professor
Female Computer Scientist
Academic Panhandling
Professor in Training
Prof-like Substance
Psychology job wiki - This wiki is not only a useful place for perusing available faculty positions, the forums are really interesting. There is a lot of discussion about the job search process as well as issues relating to being a new faculty member. There are similar wiki's for other fields as well, and I imagine they also have useful forum discussions worth perusing.
Duke Postdoc Services YouTube channel - Duke has held a number of panel discussions and workshops for postdocs which they have helpfully recorded and made available via youtube. There are a number of videos on the job search and interview process, discussions about non-academic careers, lab management, funding... lots of good stuff.
Making the Right Moves: A Practical Guide to Scientific Management for Postdocs and New Faculty - this is the lab management guide I have just started going through. It is based on a course in scientific management offered at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and contains a ton of information on things like the job search process, staffing a lab, getting funding, effective teaching, and time management.
Other blogs that write about academic stuff and often provide some good food for thought:
Academic Jungle
The Professor is In
Female Science Professor
Female Computer Scientist
Academic Panhandling
Professor in Training
Prof-like Substance
Friday, July 20, 2012
Management skills
Yesterday a friend and I were swapping stories about our experiences with crappy supervisors and started discussing what we would do differently (which I think about a lot now that I'm a month away from having my own lab). This led to a more general discussion about good lab management skills and how a PI without good management skills can really destroy a lab. We're now both reading through this guide to scientific management and so far it seems to contain some really helpful information. I will write more as I continue reading through this manual, but for now I thought I'd share a couple of thoughts from yesterday's discussion.
1) In our field, lab dynamics are really important. Particularly because we all have to share the same equipment and work space, it is really important that the lab is filled with people who are good collaborators and co-workers. Even having one person who is inconsiderate of others' time and space can become toxic for a lab, leading to much anger and resentment. In my experience, this also destroys productivity, as people aren't usually great workers when they're miserable at work. Being a good manager means recognizing problems early, trying to fix those problems quickly, and recognizing when it's time to let someone go. For some reason, in academia there is very little "letting someone go," the status quo seems to be to avoid dealing with the problem person and just graduate them as quickly as possible (also, lots of scary stories about people writing great reference letters for bad people just to get them out of their lab quickly). As far as good management techniques go, this seems like a colossal failure to me and one that I am keen to avoid.
2) If a PI is a bad manager, there's no amount of good employees that can make up for it (unless the PI is so hands-off that they actually have no control over the lab). The PI typically makes all the decisions about which postdocs to hire, which grad students to accept, etc. So if a PI is unaware that there is a toxic person in the lab (or doesn't care, or cares but doesn't do anything about it) and no steps are taken to improve the situation, the whole lab will suffer. The PI is also the bottleneck for productivity, so even if a dozen talented students churn out top-notch papers, if the PI has poor time-management those papers will languish, unpublished, for months or years.
2b) The majority of people who end up in grad school are pretty competitive "Type A" people who want to succeed. If they feel like they are being prevented from succeeding by their PI in some way (or by other lab members) then they will probably end up being very unhappy, and unhappy people are not usually the most productive. Unhappy people also tend to want to get out of bad situations, which can mean really talented researchers leaving academia. Talented people leaving academia because they had a horrible experience with a supervisor is bad for science. If you are a scientist you probably love science, so it seems pretty counterproductive to behave in a way that's ultimately bad for science.
1) In our field, lab dynamics are really important. Particularly because we all have to share the same equipment and work space, it is really important that the lab is filled with people who are good collaborators and co-workers. Even having one person who is inconsiderate of others' time and space can become toxic for a lab, leading to much anger and resentment. In my experience, this also destroys productivity, as people aren't usually great workers when they're miserable at work. Being a good manager means recognizing problems early, trying to fix those problems quickly, and recognizing when it's time to let someone go. For some reason, in academia there is very little "letting someone go," the status quo seems to be to avoid dealing with the problem person and just graduate them as quickly as possible (also, lots of scary stories about people writing great reference letters for bad people just to get them out of their lab quickly). As far as good management techniques go, this seems like a colossal failure to me and one that I am keen to avoid.
2) If a PI is a bad manager, there's no amount of good employees that can make up for it (unless the PI is so hands-off that they actually have no control over the lab). The PI typically makes all the decisions about which postdocs to hire, which grad students to accept, etc. So if a PI is unaware that there is a toxic person in the lab (or doesn't care, or cares but doesn't do anything about it) and no steps are taken to improve the situation, the whole lab will suffer. The PI is also the bottleneck for productivity, so even if a dozen talented students churn out top-notch papers, if the PI has poor time-management those papers will languish, unpublished, for months or years.
2b) The majority of people who end up in grad school are pretty competitive "Type A" people who want to succeed. If they feel like they are being prevented from succeeding by their PI in some way (or by other lab members) then they will probably end up being very unhappy, and unhappy people are not usually the most productive. Unhappy people also tend to want to get out of bad situations, which can mean really talented researchers leaving academia. Talented people leaving academia because they had a horrible experience with a supervisor is bad for science. If you are a scientist you probably love science, so it seems pretty counterproductive to behave in a way that's ultimately bad for science.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)